Carpet Freshening Products

Baking soda is one of nature’s great deodorizers. Effective and inexpensive, baking soda can be used in many ways from cooking to cleaning and everything in between. It is often used to absorb unpleasant odors – a box of baking soda in the fridge keeps food odors from smelling foul.

Many carpet freshener products on the market today are made from baking soda. They work by sprinkling them onto the carpet where they absorb bad odors and then are vacuumed up. They often include a fresh smelling fragrance so when the carpet is vacuumed it will leave the scent behind. That sounds simple and wonderful but there are TWO big problems with this.

The particles of baking soda are so small that a good amount of the product remains in the carpet, even after vacuuming – YIKES! Some of this remaining product even makes it way down through the carpet and onto the padding or sub floor below. What this means for your carpet is that the baking soda can do the same amount of damage that soil does, causing your carpet to wear and distort prematurely.

Secondly, because the baking soda particles are so fine this can cause your vacuum to clog. Build up in the hoses, filters, and even the vacuum motor can create a loss of suction. A loss of suction means a less thorough vacuuming and less soil load being removed from the carpet. We previously spoke about the importance of vacuuming where we explained just how important vacuuming is to prolonging the life of your carpet. It is the best thing besides professional carpet cleaning that you can do to keep your carpet fresh and clean.

All Is Not Lost

The purpose of this article is not to steer you away from using baking soda or carpet freshening products. We want to make you aware of the possible problems that we see every day. Once damage is done to your carpet it is impossible to reverse it. Our warning is for any of the fine particulate baking soda based products. However, there are carpet freshening products that utilize a larger granule size that is easier to vacuum up. These products are as effective and you do not have the issues that their fine particulate relatives have.

Give us a call or by using the form on the right side of the page if you have any questions about the carpet freshening products you’re using.